Review : The Outlast Trials : Grotesque Horror Party

Outlast has always been a staple in the horror genre since its debut in 2013 when it shocked the world with it’s found-footage-esque story that would have players screaming in the comfort of their homes. With an even more successful sequel and, now, The Outlast: Trials, it is more evident than ever that Red Barrels knows how to make a damn good horror game – even when trekking into new territory like multiplayer. Trials has been in early access for little more than a year, so if you’d like to read my previous thoughts on the early access, feel free to check them out here.

With over 40 hours of gameplay, I can say that The Outlast: Trials bears its grotesque formula on its sleeve in a manner that will have you jumping out of your seat whether you have a party of friends or not. This title is not for the faint of heart, and it often pushes to the limit when it comes to horror. With concepts branching from deadly mind-games to body-horror, the macabre nature of Outlast will leave a vile taste in your mouth that only it can deliver. I mean this in the best way, but enter at your own risk, and please bring some friends along for the ride.

Escape Room of Sheer Terror

Upon the full release of The Outlast: Trials, you can expect several improvements and expansions that make the experience a hefty one and well worth the price tag. In its entirety, Trials has five different locations with multiple missions to satiate the desire for pure adrenaline that this IP is known to offer. Each location boasts three different missions, with one being a larger experience and the other two being smaller incursions of similar mettle. Each one is a sandbox of assets littered with terrifying creatures, anxiety driven puzzles, and a maze of corridors reeking with unknown terror.

Aside from general themes and locations, you can expect a multitude of puzzles to stand between you and becoming a star patient for Murkoff Corporation. With many of these puzzles having disturbing outcomes, you can’t help but wonder how much more twisted the next location will become. Some of the newer locations that were not in the early access build for The Outlast Trials even left me grimacing in disgust as I worked through the makeshift escape room puzzles to further my “therapy.”

Each location is littered with details that will leave you uncomfortable and filled with the ambience Outlast has become known for. One of the biggest improvements I noticed right away compared to the early access model of Trials is how the enemy AI interacts with the player and how the environment shapes your experience. The creatures hunting you will often scour the environment like they have been known to do, but, in some cases, even when I knew I was out of the enemies’ lines-of-sight, they would pander over to the desk or coat closet I was in to really let that feeling of helplessness set in, yanking me out when I felt safe. No punches are being pulled this go around; even when I played with friends, I found myself sweating in my seat with my heart beating out of my chest.

When it came to exploring, I found myself jumping at light bulbs popping like balloons and many other environmental factors that I don’t remember being so impactful to my experience the first go around. When you see a body torn in half with blood all over the floor, the environmental storytelling sets the tone almost too well. It makes those little moments of fear that much more impactful because, the second you feel safe, Outlast will show you nowhere is safe.

One of the most impressive systems available in this makeshift prequel is its sound design. This is arguably one of the most pertinent parts of any horror title that will always set the tone. Thankfully, Red Barrels establishes a terrifying score that will make you feel uncomfortable to your bones and set the tone for each trial. The voice actors for enemies and bosses will fill you with a sense of dread, and the environment will shock you when you least expect it. All of this is made possible in the formula the Outlast IP bears in its DNA while improving upon it in every way.

With these upgraded systems, there is also a very noticeable overhaul of graphics and performance. Outlast has never looked this good and performed this well. In early access there were moments where frames would drop in detail-heavy areas, but in the full release, I never dipped below 60fps. Any technological hiccups present in the early access build were non-existent in my experience playing the final product.

Team Building in a Blood-Soaked Asylum

One of my favorite aspects to the new addition in Outlast is how you craft your identity in the lore-ridden franchise. Trials is a prequel to the first two games, and, in your induction to the facilities at cold-war Murkoff, you get to create your own character. Now, this system isn’t as in-depth as most modern RPG’s, but it is enough to give you a sense of identity.

Each player will start with the same padded room, and, as you complete missions with the objective of furthering your therapy, you gain more things to decorate your room, outfits to wear, and gear to carry. This provides a fun incentive to express your individuality and even offers ways to differentiate your playstyle from friends in a group. By the end of my initial playthrough, my room looked like a grotesque museum with a severed torso, clown posters, and crazy drawings on the walls. This level of individuality was creative and rewarding as I earned more currency and items to add to my room.

When it comes to gameplay, each player can pick between four different rigs: the stun, heal, mine, and x-ray rig. Each one can offer a unique function in a squad setting, especially an organized one. But one way Trials falls short in this manner is in how potent some of these rigs are. I unlocked all of them, and, after testing each one, I found that the stun and heal rigs were the most useful. The other two can have their own functions; for example, the x-ray rig is very helpful if you are playing solo, but for Trials in particular, I almost always found myself preferring the company of other players.

Even during the early access, I found this to be the case. When it comes to the mine rig, the stun option does much of the same thing and functions in a more reactionary manner as opposed to dropping a mine. I found it nearly always better just to throw my stun and disappear as opposed to the other option. I genuinely would have loved to see more options added to further players’ identities and gameplay styles when it came to the rig.

One of the most interesting parts of its loop is how you engage with this content after beating all of the missions on the standard difficulty. This can get a bit tiresome, but to unlock all of the cosmetic content — including ultra-sick legendary outfits– you have to engage with the many difficulties and the same levels. It can get a bit repetitive, but the game does give you plenty of reason to come back. Even if you earn your release from Murkoff by beating all of the missions on standard difficulty and surviving the ultimate test of the final mission (Which, I might add, is insanely difficult the first few times you attempt it), you can begin a new difficulty chain dredging a heftier challenge with a need for you to wear your brown pants if you weren’t wearing them already.

Insane in the Dissected Membrane

Much like other well-known horror game franchises, Outlast prides itself on its creative villains and their ability to make your skin crawl. Trials is no different with the inclusion of two characters: Mother Goose and Leland Cole.

Cole is a “police” officer who enforces the law with a cattle prod, often shocking himself and speaking gibberish, while Mother Goose is a play on a children’s television show-host with a twisted sock puppet of death. Both are absolutely insane in every way and will jolt you with a sense of dread when you encounter them in your many attempts at “therapy.” Yet, one of the biggest ways I am let down is in the missed opportunity to create more “boss” type enemies.

Outlast, as an IP, has so many faces of terror that I can recall with disdain (this is a good thing). The first two entries often engraved their experience with novel influence like a scalpel to my pre-frontal cortex. With Red Barrels adding new locations with new objectives and even more twisted shenanigans to give your brain a good ol’ dose of insanity, you will find yourself disappointed to find that these two villains are the only members of opposition encountered in the story aside from the various basic and elite enemies.

This leads to my biggest criticism for The Outlast: Trials, which is the re-use of many puzzle loops and environments in the newer locations. Most games, of course, do this, but I would have enjoyed experiencing newer puzzles, or to have experiences which grafted to the tingles of sanity I had left after completing missions. The repetition is a little bit disappointing, but, thankfully, it doesn’t ruin Trials momentum at all. I still found the experience to be thrilling every time I went somewhere new, even if I knew exactly what I needed to do to complete the next objective.

My last criticism for Outlast falls on the UI for some of the newer content. In earlier missions you can often see each objective in the upper-left-hand corner, and it will update in real time, so you know exactly what you need to do even if you don’t know the where or how. Yet, in later missions, I found that the objective indicator was more generalized and less informative. This led to some experiences being genuinely confusing and requiring more investigation of the environment and level itself. The reason I point this out is that, in many instances during early access, the UI would update with the similar styles of objectives. But, in the newer ones, it is left to be more ambiguous.

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As you sprint through hallways of visceral blood while being pursued by beings of pure terror, The Outlast: Trials provides a unique experience only Red Barrels is capable of delivering. You might wonder, ‘How can a multiplayer game be just as scary as a single-player game?’ And I can confidently say that this entry answers that question with unforgettable bliss. The Outlast: Trials officially launches on March 5^th with cross-play available on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam.

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